This year the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) is experimenting with a two-part submission process intended to make the conference more participant-driven and democratic. The second step is this Call for PAPERS. Proposals must be submitted by December 15, 2018 at 11:59 pm EST.

Water, Animals, and Arctic Climate Change: An International Symposium
The symposium will shift the focus from purely textual ecocriticism to the recent breakthroughs in material ecocriticism and explore the creative role of materiality in narrative meaning-making.

The (re)emergence of populism(s), the increase in hate speech, and the resurgence of ethnic and religious violence and xenophobia—in what Pankaj Mishra has called “the age of anger”—all evince a complex web of relations and gestures toward the Other, which call the project of modernity into question.

We face an unparalleled historical situation of global multispecies suffering, variously known as the Anthropocene, or the New Climatic Regime, and signalled by alarming states of exposure and precarity in more-than-human worlds. The question of how to nurture liveable futures for 'us' – while also asking who and what might be included in this 'us' and with what consequences – depends on our abilities and willingness to re-negotiate means of entering into relations and, indeed, conversations with nonhumans, be they other species, microbes or machines.